© Steve Berman/The New York TimesA limousine, unable to drive uphill going west on 57th Street in Manhattan, was pushed back onto 6th Avenue by passersby.
For at least the fifth time this season, a major snowstorm crawled up the eastern seaboard and swept across the Northeast early Thursday, dumping fresh snow on top of streets already covered in icy slush and disrupting the commutes of millions of people.
The powerful storm, appearing as a giant white smudge over the Northeast on radar maps, arrived in two parts, coating the region with rain and several inches of snow early Wednesday and then dumping up to an additional foot of snow in some places overnight Thursday.
In New York City, the wintry one-two punch caused all non-emergency city government offices to close on Thursday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced through Twitter. The Department of Education said that all public schools across the five boroughs would be closed for the day.
Across the New York region, hundreds of flights were canceled, and the Port Authority later closed Newark, Teterboro, and John F. Kennedy Airports. The Metropolitan Transit Authority suspended all of its bus services across New York City and Long Island early Thursday. The Long Island Rail Road said it would operate a reduced weekday morning schedule, while the Metro-North Railroad said its Harlem and Hudson lines would run on a Saturday schedule. The Nor'easter created a fresh sense of snow fatigue in a region that has been unusually battered by storms. Trying to prevent a repeat of the problems associated with a late December blizzard, when streets went unplowed for days, New York City sent out more than 2,000 salt spreaders, snow plows and other vehicles to clear the streets.